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Condemning Saudi Arabia’s treatment of political and free speech activists, illegally detaining them without charge or explanation, British lawyers have called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to remove the kingdom from its board.

Leading human rights barristers, Rodney Dixon QC of Garden Court Chambers and Lord Kenneth Donald John Macdonald, published a legal opinion on Wednesday, claiming that 61 individuals, “many of whom are believed to be human rights defenders or political activists,” were detained in September 2017.

“Our main recommendation is that steps should be taken by the General Assembly to suspend the government of Saudi Arabia from the [UN] Human Rights Council,” Dixon told Al Jazeera.

It is “completely contradictory and ironic for a government with systemic patterns of abuse – as we have highlighted in the report – to be sitting on the council, and in fact previously to have chaired the council.

“That suspension will act as a major lever for the government to clean up their act and make a proper new start.”

The report, titled “Shrouded in secrecy,” was commissioned by the families of the victims who were detained in September last year in “a wave of arbitrary arrests, detentions, and disappearances.”

Nearly 30 people, of the 61, are still detained, however, the whereabouts of the other 31 detainees is unknown, Dixon said.

“Those detained have not been charged with any offence, and the information about the reasons for their arrests and circumstances of their imprisonment are very limited,” the report said.

“There is cause for serious concern about the treatment of many of those detained, including Mr Salman Al-Awda who has recently been hospitalised and others who are, effectively, disappeared.”

Al-Awda is a highly respected Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia, with nearly 150 million fans on Twitter. While his detention has not been explained, it could be because of the fact that he had tweeted a peaceful message, shortly before he was arrested, urging the Saudi and Qatari governments to end their disputes. He was recently hospitalized after having been in solitary confinement for five months.

“While there may have been quite a lot of drama created by the very high-profile arrests at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which was targeting mainly princes, politicians and businessmen, less has been said about these arrests which have caused a lot of concern,” Sonia Gallego, Al Jazeera’s reporter located London, said.

“According to the report, there are 30 arbitrarily detained and another 31 who have simply disappeared.”

Although human rights groups had previously called for the removal of Saudi Arabia from the Human Rights Council over its genocidal invasion to Yemen which brought about one of the most devastating humanitarian crisis in the world, the kingdom was re-elected in 2016, in a UN body which is ’responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.”

“The suspension of membership rights is not simply a hypothetical possibility,” the report argued.

If two-thirds of the members vote in the UN General Assembly in favor of suspending Saudi Arabia, the kingdom could, in fact, be removed. Dixon admitted that the “threshold is high,” however, he insisted that “the evidence is there to reach the factual threshold.”

While it seems like a desperate reach, considering the kingdoms recent turns which have been sweet mouthing the West, suspending a member has been done before. A precedent is the 2011 suspension of Libya, Dixon reminded. During the 2011 uprising of the Libyan people, the government of Muammar Gaddafi was accused of human rights violations against civilians, which resulted in the council calling for the suspension of Libya in February of that year. The UNGA voted in favor the next month, making it the first time the UN had revoked a country’s membership.

British Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to be under pressure by human rights activists to raise human rights concerns at her meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which is scheduled later this month.

The council is due to complete a periodic review of the kingdom’s human rights record in November this year.